A Meeting of the High Council
by kurt.trout
Summary: Five and a half years after the destruction of Sunnydale, the High Council of the International Council of Watchers convenes to discuss the members’ activities of the past month. Contains pineapples, eye patches, and a harassed Englishman.
1. Chapter 1

International Council of Watchers

Meeting of the High Council

January 2, 2009

London, England

A blond woman in tight leather pants, normally known as Buffy Summers and occasionally known as The Slayer, stood in front of a group of five other people. "As President of the High Council, I call this meeting to order. The chair recognizes General Secretary Lehane. Will you read the roll call?"

"Sure thing." The first woman sat down and a brunette woman with similar fashion sense stood up.

"President Summers?"

"Here."

"Vice President Giles?"

The oldest person in the room by at least ten years crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. "Is this really necessary, Faith? I mean-"

"_Vice President Giles?_" the second woman repeated, but in a tone that promised injury if she was interrupted again.

"Present," he replied a little petulantly.

"Treasurer Rosenberg?"

"I'm here."

"Secretary of Defense Summers?"

"Present."

"Secretary of Offence Harris"

"Howdy."

"All member of the High Council are present and accounted for. I yield the floor to President Summers."

"Thank you, General Secretary Lehane." The first woman stood up again as the second sat down. "For our first order of business, I move to drop parliamentary procedures for the duration of this meeting. Does anyone second the motion?"

"Yes," five voices called out at once.

"Great, motion passed. Anyone have something new? Willow, how did your trip with Faith to Santa Barbara go?"

"Pretty good, Buffy," said the woman with red hair. "We did a day of surveillance before determining that the supposed psychic detective was faking his visions but was completely innocuous."

"You two were gone for a week," grumbled the man with an eye patch. "What were you doing the whole time? Sunbathing? Shopping?"

"Don't be an idiot, Xander. If we wanted to do either of those, we could have chosen anywhere around the world from Aruba to Paris."

"Sunbathing in Paris?" asked Xander.

The younger Summers smacked the back of Xander's head before motioning for Willow to carry on.

"Be nice, Dawn," said Buffy with a small glare.

"Anyway," Willow continued, "after checking them out, we decided to hang around the two guys for awhile and have some fun."

"G gave us a week for this assignment," added Faith, "and I was _not_ coming back in time to help out with the annual book inventory."

Dawn reached towards Faith for another head smack, but was stopped by the sudden appearance of Buffy's hand around her wrist.

"No. Bad Dawnie," her sister said firmly.

Dawn pulled her arm from her sister's grasp and asked, "Well what happened?"

Willow and Faith turned to one another sharing identical grins and squealed, "We helped solve a murder!"

"What's so special about that?" asked Giles. "We solve murders all the time."

"What's special, Mr. Giles, is the fact that this murder was ab-so-_lutely_ normal," said Willow.

Faith continued, "A complete absence of the weird, the creepy, and the cryptic all week. Well, except for the pineapples."

"Yeah, I was getting sick of pineapples. Pineapple smoothies, pineapple upside down cakes, pineapple juice, pineapple chunks… how did Gus stand it?"

"We may never know," Faith replied. "We actually solved the murder our second day there and spent the rest of the week dishing out tauntage to the local police department."

"We also kept flirting with Shawn in front of the cops."

"We were all, 'Mr. Spencer, your _soooo_ amazing finding that clue when the other investigators were stuck at a dead end,' and '_Oooo_, Shawnie, you're so brave helping the police and risking your wellbeing for the good of the community.'"

"One of the senior cops ripped the handle off his mug when Faith said the second one," added Willow.

"I got tingles when got out his handcuffs and started threatening us."

"Lovely, Faith," stated Buffy. "Any other news? What's going on with Operation Torchwood?"

"I wish you hadn't let Andrew name the operation," gripped Giles. "I feel silly ever time I even think about it."

"He was the one being sent in, Giles," replied Buffy. "He deserved to name his own operation. Anyway, that's not important right now. Dawn, what's happening?"

"When Andrew was inserted last year," Dawn started, "he was only supposed to be doing light recon until Vi could make it through the Air Force Academy and join a team at the base legitimately. Get this: two weeks ago, Andrew made it off world."

Over the years, Giles had gotten better at hiding his surprise, but at the moment, his sputtering was off the charts. "How in the world did that happen?" he asked.

"You know how kitchen workers generally have very little cooking ability?" asked Dawn.

"Like Buffy at Doublemeat Palace," added Willow helpfully.

Ignoring Buffy's 'hey,' Dawn continued, "One of the teams encountered a planet willing to ally themselves with Earth in exchange for cooking lessons. Apparently, one of the team members had brought some of Andrew's cookies- you know the ones- on the trip and shared them with the locals. Command sent Andrew through the gate the next day with his baking supplies."

Dawn paused for a moment as they each recalled the happy that was Andrew's Chocolate Gingersnaps.

Xander snapped out of the collective reverie first and asked, "Do you think he'll be going through the gate again?"

"I'm sure he will," answered Dawn. "Andrew's cooking talent is easier to market to other civilizations than most of our techno-toys since other worlds have generally surpassed us in technology."

"Great. What about you and Xander, Dawn? How was your trip to Nevada?" asked Buffy.

"I took us a few days to track the Dar'kad demon that was running the Ocelot poker ring," replied Dawn. "Clem's information was pretty old, so we started off looking in the wrong place."

"It's not that we're complaining," inserted Xander. "While we were in Vegas, we caught a few shows and hit the casinos hard."

"We eventually tracked him down to Reno, had a few choice words, got him to agree to stick to playing for kitties, and got the heck out of there."

"Why'd you leave so quickly?" asked Willow.

"We were pretty sure the sheriff's department was staffed entirely by demons," she replied.

"Do I need to make with the slayage?" asked Buffy while grinding one fist into the other hand.

"Naw," replied Xander. "They were pretty incompetent but weren't really doing any harm. Still, there were some major wiggins, especially from that gnome-like woman."

Dawn shivered in agreement.

"Were there any incidents we should know about?" asked Giles.

As Xander said 'no', Dawn replied, "There was that time Xander got us kicked out of the Treasure Island." At the others' questioning stares, Dawn continued, "He got into a fight with one of the pirates from the show."

"I still say my eye patch was manlier."

"Of course it was," replied Dawn in a tone normally reserved for a three-year-old. "How about you and Giles, Buffy? Did you find us any doctors?"

"After our whirlwind tour of the United States," Buffy started, "me and Watcherman decided we should just recruit from within. Pay for some of our own to go through medical training. We already have one girl in every squad training to become a watcher substitute. It makes sense to have another girl ready to play doctor when needed."

"What Buffy means," interjected Giles, "is that we couldn't find a sane person with medical training anywhere in this blasted country. Each doctor we found had some sort of colossal problem, reaching from drugs to mental health. There was this one from New Jersey that would have gotten killed by any one of our girls in less than ten minutes if they were left in the room together."

"Yeah, that one was big on the snark," interrupted Buffy. "At least he wasn't sleeping with a hallucination, like that one lady in Seattle."

"I personally thought the young man from California was a good choice," said Giles.

"He spent half his shift daydreaming, Giles. It was wiggy and you know it."

"Whatever," sighed Giles. "We've got a meeting with the President-Elect next week that we should prepare for. Do we want to ease him into things, or should we go for full blown intimidation?"

At the raised eyebrows of every other member of the High Council, Giles answered his own question with an air of defeat.

"Intimidation it is."


	2. Chapter 2

International Council of Watchers

Meeting of the High Council

January 2, 2009

London, England

A Moment Later…

The others didn't even attempt to hide the malice in their smiles.

"Don't sound so resigned, Giles," reproached Dawn. She turned to face the rest of the table and asked, "Could I make a small point?"

"Sure, sweetie," answered Willow.

"Thanks. Are we all going to go? I know Riley will be at the meeting with Santos, but I think having all six of us is overkill."

"True dat, Dawnster," replied Xander. "Only two of us need to go; one for the 'splainy and one for the scary."

"Why not both for the scary?" asked Dawn. "Willow is great at explaining and then she can go Great and Powerful Oz on them."

"She'd be the Wicked Witch of the West, yeah?" asked Buffy. "She went evil for a bit and then went good again. Back me up Giles; I know you saw the musical."

"That, my dear, is only because you dragged me to it," Giles managed to reply with minimal glaring. Giles leaned back in his chair and added, "personally, I would have been happier staying in my hotel room all night."

"Please, G-man. We were in New York City. The Big Apple! We had to see a show."

"And that was the _only_ one available?" Giles asked suspiciously. He had seen advertisements for all kinds of shows, even a tribute band that supposedly did good covers of The Who.

"W-" Buffy started but was interrupted by Faith's hand hammering the table.

"_Fine_," Buffy sighed as she moved to the head of the table. "We need a plan. I think we should keep the teams we've been working in for the last month, which means Faith and Willow are going to meet the new President."

"Buffy," Dawn whined, "I wanted to meet the President. I'm getting dangerously close to angst-ridden teenager territory."

The two sisters exchanged looks; the younger had a desperate pout and the older had a single arched eyebrow.

"You and Xander will have an assignment of your own," Buffy finally replied. "Have we sent anyone over on that NCIS consult yet, Giles?"

"Not to my knowledge. We were going to wait for Xander to get back from the gambling bust."

"Huh? Why Xander?" asked the same man as he grabbed a doughnut from the tray in the middle of the table.

"The request for an expert on the supernatural came in at midnight, just before your plane took off," started Buffy.

"It came from one Anthony DiNozzo on behalf of a Leroy Jethro Gibbs," added Giles.

"I thought I recognized the first name from somewhere, so I had a search done on him. Turns out, he's the Xan-man's cousin."

"Yeah, Tony's my mom's brother's only kid. I haven't seen him in forever. We had a fight the last time we talked." Xander swiveled in his chair to face Buffy. "Then again, we were both about five and he was trying to steal Willow from me." Xander's face grew contemplative. "I can't believe you remembered that."

"What can I say, a slayer never forgets," Buffy replied smugly.

"Damn supernatural instinct-slash-memory thingy," grumbled Dawn.

"Getting back to the point of all this," inserted Giles somewhat testily, "you two are going to be working as consultants for the police, not as direct representatives of the ICW. There's been a series of suspicious deaths in Arlington, Virginia recently. Each victim was military and, based on the images they sent us, had some sort of early Mayan writing tattooed into them. They suspect it is some nut job trying to perform a magic ritual and wanted a consultant with experience in ancient languages and mystical chicanery."

"Is it a demon?" Dawn asked, curiosity shining from her eyes.

"It is definitely not a demon," answered Buffy. "Giles and I translated the glyphs. They were essentially nonsense; none of the final consonants were synharmonic. None. Whoever wrote it wasn't trying too hard to get it right. It took us about two minutes to figure out that he just substituted the letters of his message for the Mayan phonetic signs."

"He just left a simple taunting message," Giles continued, "challenging the police to find and stop him. As we all know, demons are usually either far more exacting or indiscriminate than this killer."

"And a demon would be challenging the slayers, not the police," added Buffy.

"But couldn't it be a demon pretending to be a human serial killer?" asked Faith, finally deciding to join the conversation.

"It's possible," Buffy started, "but it's unlikely."

"Like human serial killers," Giles added, "demons that mutilate their victims and write taunting messages on them tend to address the messages to the people who are most likely to be able find and kill them. In the past, that would have been rouge demon hunters, and now, that would be us."

"Psychopathic killers," Buffy continued, "whether human or demon, usually aren't in it for the killing. It's all about the chase."

"And Buffy's psych degree comes in handy once again," Dawn sighed.

"Well pardon me for using my brains once in a while. You always misunderestimate me," Buffy sighed airily.

"Ladies? If we could get back to the point?" asked Xander. "So Willow and Faith are going to visit the West Wing and me and Dawnie are going to visit NCIS." Xander turned to Buffy and asked, "Where are you and Giles going?"

"We're headed back to New York. A couple of our girls ran into some trouble up there as witnesses to an attempted rape. They need their legal guardians, i.e. me and Giles, to be their during their testimony."

"Did your rugrats give the bastard what he deserved?" Faith grinned maliciously at the thought. Rapists are ranked just under domestic abusers in the scale of how much Faith wants to kill people.

"They were surprisingly quite gentle." Buffy smiled while remembering last night's phone call. "Diane and Charlie pulled the guy off the girl and tackled him to the ground in a submission hold. Unfortunately, the girls didn't let the guy zip back up before bringing him down and learned first hand that breaking a certain part of the anatomy hurts quite a bit more than breaking a bone."

The three other girls joined Faith in grinning maliciously while Xander squirmed in his chair uncomfortably while Giles just accepted his fate.

Deciding the break his uncomfortable silence, Xander continued their conversation. "So I suppose that means that Buffster and the G-man will be going all Law and Order on us." Xander turned in his chair again and alternated between staring at Buffy and Giles. "I just don't know which one of you will make a better bad cop."

"We can take turns." Buffy walked over to Giles and placed her hand on his shoulder. "After all, friends share."

"Yeah, Giles hasn't had a chance to go full-blown Ripper in quite a while," Willow added with an innocent smile.

After a few minutes of angry glares from Giles, giggles from the girls, and manly giggles from Xander, Faith stood up.

"I think it's about time we busted this popsicle stand."

"Ooo, shotgun!" shouted Willow.

"You can't call shotgun on a jet," argued Dawn.

"Well, then I call co-pilot's chair," huffed Willow.

"You can't call that either!"

"Why not?"

"Can you fly a plane?"

"No…"

"Well there's your answer."

Faith and Xander walked out of the room to escape the squabble, but were followed, quite unfortunately in their minds, by the still arguing girls.

"Do you think I should tell Willow that her cousin Josh is going to be there?" Buffy asked Giles. Now waiting for his reply, Buffy dismissed the question with a wave of her hand. "Nah. She'll like being surprised. She hasn't seen anyone in her family since we left Sunnydale."

In following with the Golden Rule, Giles decided to keep the name of the ADA they would be working with to himself. Buffy hadn't seen anyone from her family since leaving Sunnydale either, excepting Dawn, of course. He was sure that she'd be glad to see her aunt, Alexandra Cabot. He also tried to keep his maniacal laughter to himself, which did not work quite as well since he began to choke.

"You ok, Giles?" Buffy asked as she pat him on the back 'lightly.'

"I'm fine, my dear. Why don't you run along and get yourself packed. We're scheduled to leave within the hour."

"Oh, I'd better hurry," Buffy said as she ran out of the room.

After the door closed, Giles let out a sigh of relief, which quickly gave way to another bout of maniacal laughter.

"_MWAHAHA_-"

"You sure you're ok?" Buffy asked as she stuck her head back in the room.

"I'm sure," Giles said quickly. "See you in an hour."

"Alright," Buffy looked concerned, but decided to ignore Giles' weirdness for the moment.

The door closed again and when he was sure that Buffy had walked down the hallway, he let out another maniacal laugh. Only much quieter. And with less choking.


	3. Chapter 3

International Council of Watchers

Impromptu Meeting of the High Council

January 13, 2009

New York, New York

The six members of the council each sat on one of the beds in Willow and Faith's hotel room in DC.

"So… how'd your mission go?" asked Buffy, not wanting to talk about her own.

"Everyone thinks I'm the black sheep of the family," replied Xander. "I'm supposed to be my father reincarnate. Apparently, Mom came out of her drunken stupor enough at some point in my high school years to notice how often I was staying out late and getting into fights. She then complained to her brother about how I was dad reincarnated. Mom's family hates dad and thusly, they hate me. It's like the transitive property. Or reflexive? Symmetric? It doesn't really matter, either way."

"The same thing happened to me," said Buffy, glad she wasn't the only one.

"Ditto," added Willow. Turning to Buffy, she added, "You wanna go first, or should I?"

"I'll go," said Buffy, deciding to get it over with quickly. "Giles forgot to tell me that my aunt would be working with the same police squad we were working with."

"Just like how you forgot to tell me that Josh was working for Santos?" accused Willow with her accusing face.

"Maybe a little," replied Buffy as she shrugged her shoulders. "Anyway, mom's sister never really got over me burning down the gym at Hemery. Or how I got sent to a mental hospital. Or how I ran away. Or-"

"That's quite enough, Buffy," said Giles as he pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Anyway, it took me a while to convince her I wasn't a crime lord or sex slave or some type of psychotic…"

"…And it took me even longer to convince her that I wasn't a pervert," inserted Giles.

"Yeah, those Special Victims Unit guys see sex crimes everywhere. I half expected them to arrest Giles when he put his arm around my shoulders. But that's neither here nor there. We eventually managed to get to some Aunt-Niece bonding action in towards the end of our visit."

"When you say bonding," Giles started, "surely you mean that she began to trust you enough to let you out of those handcuffs and managed to look you in the eyes once before we left."

"It was better than what we had before, so it was bonding. And my name's not Shirley."

"Do try to contain yourself," Giles grumbled. Turning to Xander, he added, "At least you weren't accused of sleeping with Buffy,"

"Watch it, mister," Buffy warned, finger wagging. "I'll have you know that I'm extremely desirable."

"I meant accused of sleeping with you when you were a teenager," Giles added hastily. "Detective Stabler was nearly foaming at the mouth when they found out we shared a hotel room."

"Which was whose fault?" asked Buffy.

"Well I was accused of sleeping with Dawn, if you can believe it," admitted Xander. At Dawn's angry look, Xander hastily added, "not that you aren't an attractive and fully grown up woman, because you are and saying that would just be idiotic and not true and completely-"

"Shut up, Xander," Dawn said finally, deciding pity him some. "I know what you mean. Besides, he was accusing me of sleeping with you as well."

"No one accused us of sleeping together," Willow said brightly, interrupting Xander's incredulous stare.

"True, but I'm sure that Sam guy was thinkin' it," said Faith with a smirk, adding, "and your cousin was funny as hell."

"Oh? Do tell," commanded Dawn.

"Josh wasn't invited into the briefing with us and he got all huffy," stated Willow, not wanting to really delve into it the way Buffy and Xander had.

"Yeah, he was like, 'What could my college-dropout cousin who has by all accounts done nothing with her life possibly have to contribute to a meeting on national security that I _myself_ am not allowed to attend?' and Willow as all, 'Step off, Dick-Head, or I'll bleepidy-bleep your bleep!'"

"Faith," Willow sighed, "I didn't say that. Why are you always making things up? And what's with the bleepidy-bleep?"

"It's better than saying, 'Josh, you haven't spoken to me since I was thirteen. Is it the slightest bit possible that I've changed since middle school? As for college dropout, did you perhaps notice my town falling into a sinkhole? And as for insignificant, did you perhaps notice that I am on the board of an international corporation? Try getting your information from people who have spoken to me in the last ten years.'"

"I think the second one was better," said Buffy.

"Ditto," added Dawn. "And you still didn't explain the bleeping."

"Either way," continued Faith, ignoring Dawn's comment, "it shut the man up long enough for us to go to the briefing, which in itself was a barrel of laughs."

"What was it that you said?" Willow asked. "Oh yeah, 'We've got you by the figurative balls and in all honesty, either one of us could have you by the literal balls before anyone in this room had a chance to draw a gun.'"

"Behind me, Red was doing the slow fade into Darth Willow, conjuring a wind to blow papers around the room, flicking the lights on and off, and lowering the temperature by like, ten degrees." Taking a moment to consider, she added, "it was scary as shit."

"Not as scary as Tony's boss," said Xander. "That man radiated menace."

"Please," Dawn countered. "He's just an overgrown teddy bear. Ziva's the one who scared me. I'd swear she was a slayer if I didn't already know she couldn't be."

"She even did a spell to check," inserted Xander. "I wanted to check using the traditional method, but Dawn talked me out of it."

"More like I confiscated all your knives and wouldn't let you touch one for the rest of the trip." Turning to Xander, Dawn added, "I can't believe you managed to eat that steak with just a fork."

"Like that's any different from normal," complained Buffy.

The room fell silent for a few moments as they each tried to shake the image of Xander's eating habits from their minds.

"So," Willow said, breaking the silence, "each of us met one of our long-lost relatives." After a second, she added, "That's ironic."

"Yeah, what are the chances?" asked Xander, with a small glare towards Buffy and Giles.

"I dunno," Buffy responded innocently.

"Technically only three of us met a long lost relative," said Dawn. "I wouldn't have minded meeting some relatives for real."

"Speak for yourself," objected Giles. "I am perfectly happy living a life without contact with those who share my genetic material."

"Seconded," added Faith. "So what now? Vegas?"

"Nah, Atlantic City," Xander declared.

"Me and Xander decided that Vegas is too cliché," added Dawn.

"I don't know," Faith said, "there's something to be said for tradition."

"What? Does waking up to a stranger in your bed in Atlantic City just not have the same feel as it does in Vegas?" grumbled Giles.

"You're one to talk, Mister," complained an incredulous Buffy. "You get remarkably flirty when drunk. I have to watch you all night when we go out drinking because you're liable to pick up the first floozy you meet."

"Floozy?" asked Giles with self-righteous anger. The other others edged out of the room in an effort to avoid another skirmish in the ongoing war between Slayer and Watcher.

"Anyone who'd sleep with you would have to be," Buffy stated with a slight cackle. Pausing in her attack on Giles for a moment, she added, "Excluding my mother, of course. She was under the influence at the time."

"I'll ignore that and take the moral highroad here," Giles replied in a voice that was far from modest.

"There's no moral highroad for floozies, whether female or male," Buffy declared. "You sir are a floozy."

"I'll admit," Giles started, "that I tend to be a little amorous when I imbibe alcohol, but that doesn't make me a floozy. You, on the other hand, tend to go cave girl and participate in kitten poker."

"There were mitigating circumstances in both those cases. You couldn't possibly blame me for…"

"Yes?" he asked, waiting for her to finish.

"Screw it. We have gambling to do."

"Yes. And floozies to sleep with."


End file.
